Complete

Sustain

Movement Speed

Boot Alternatives

Damage Over Time

Lifesteal

Bloodforge

Asi

Basic Attack

The Executioner

Qin's Sais

Relics

Purification Beads

Aegis Amulet

Ah Muzen Cab's Skill Order

Hive

1X

38111214

Swarm

2A

146710

Honey

3B

215161819

Stinger

4Y

59131720

Overview

The mighty Ah Muzen Cab is a ranged physical damage hunter capable of dealing massive damage over time. Playing this god effectively involves constant maintenance of strategically placed hives around the map, clearing minions, and attacking mostly from a distance to assist your allies, occasionally closing the distance to burn an enemy down. If you're a territorial insect lover then find out what all the buzz is about and play the god of bees to today!

Introduction

I am a casual player creating this guide as a way to consolidate information I've gathered from experience along with bits I've gathered from various places around the web and on this site. As always, I do my best to explain how the abilities work, what a good play style is, and how the items compliment the play style and abilities. When all of these elements align, you can really feel powerful and become an extremely valuable asset to your team.

Philosophy

Our main sources of damage are basic attacks and the bees infection, which is a damage over time. Therefore, this guide and build focuses on items which enhance attack speed, increase basic attack damage and add more damage over time to intensify our potency.

You'll start off relatively weak at first, but will become powerful once you level up a bit and obtain your third and fourth items. Therefore, you should remember to play conservatively and cautiously in the beginning, support your allies in the middle of the match, then go full-on damage chasing your enemies down and executing them at the end.

Abilities

BEES!
This is a damage over time that all of your swarm, honey, and stinger abilities will apply to any enemies they hit. The infection lasts for 2 seconds but the duration can be extended indefinitely by hitting the infected enemy with basic attacks. It also disarms targets for a short time every once in awhile. Infect them and then pummel with basic attacks!

SWARM
Deals damage in a nice wide path to all enemies and infects them with bees. Level up this ability first because it has a longer range, hits multiple targets, and is much easier to hit enemies with this than with the honey ability. It will also trigger the crusher item passive on any targets it hits, which will apply bonus damage over time.

HIVE
These have a huge radius and attack nearby enemies when you infect them with bees. They also give you attack speed, movement speed, and health regeneration. Buffs from multiple hives do not stack. They also reveal enemies on the minimap. We level this ability second because it enhances our attack speed and movement speed.

HONEY
Spray honey at a ground location which slows enemies, damages them over time while they stand in the honey, and infects them with bees when they flee. We advance this ability last because it has a short range which makes hard to hit enemies with. We use it mainly to slow our target when we're chasing down for the kill, which we shouldn't do early in a match.

STINGER
Fires a stinger in a straight line which damages any minions it goes through. It will stick in the first enemy god it hits doing massive damage, slowing them, and infecting them with bees. In a few seconds, the stinger will fall onto the ground. If you quickly pick it up, the cooldown of this ability is drastically reduced. Level this ability up evenly whenever it is available.

Hive Locations

As the god of bees, excellent hive maintenance is essential. Locate your hives so that they are partially overlapping. Try placing them in inconspicuous placed behind pillars and walls.

Infecting an enemy with bees when they are in the proximity of multiple hives does not intensify the damage. However, it is still a good idea to stack multiple hives in areas of frequent combat as your enemies will destroy them regularly.

If you notice an enemy is coming to destroy one of your hives, use this to your advantage and attack them as they approach. This can sometimes discourage melee enemies from attacking hives because they know you're watching them! Be sure to replace them as they are destroyed. Try locating them in new places periodically so that you're not too predictable. Each of your hives show up as small circles on the mini map, so watching this is a good way to keep inventory of your hives.

Typically the enemy team is adamant about destroying hives early in the game and tends to slow down or stop later in the game as the pressure builds.

Bees Infection

Hitting an enemy with an ability while they are in the radius of a hive will infect them with the bees damage over time effect. Abilities which cause this infection include swarm, honey, and stinger. However, you should not initiate with stinger

Once you infect a target with bees, hit them repeatedly with basic attacks to extend the duration of the infection until either the swarm or honey ability is ready to use again.

Using this to your advantage is paramount to your success. I can't stress how important this is. Always basic attack to begin combat, in between using abilities, and afterwards.

Rotation

Place hives, stay back, clear minions. When an enemies approach, basic attack as you identify which target your team is going to focus on.

Run up close to the target and smack them in the face with a gnarly swarm, which will cause the bees infection. Then chase them, hitting with basic attacks to refresh the bees infection.

After a few seconds, hit with honey to slow them down and apply the bees infection again, followed by more basic attacks to keep refreshing the bees infection.

Use your stinger to slow your target again and deal massive damage while once again infecting them with bees. Try as hard as you can not to miss with stinger. Ultimately, you should learn to either hit with it, or don't use it at all. Continue to hit them with basic attacks to extend the infection.

In a few seconds, or when your enemy dies, the stinger will fall to the ground. Get ready to rush in to and pick it up. Then fall back, place new hives if needed, and repeat as necessary.

Items

TRANSCENDENCE
This item give us sustain by massively increasing our mana pool. It also gives us a huge amount of physical power, while also providing a small amount of mana regeneration and cooldown reduction. It is a stacking item that gets more powerful as you get kills. That's why we get this first and start building stacks immediately by clearing minion waves.

NINJA TABI
Provides attack speed and mana in addition to power and movement speed. We don't get boots first because our hives boost our speed enough initially. The mana further amplified the transcendence item passive. For more power, use Warrior Tabi instead. Try out Wind Demon or Poisoned Star for situational high damage movement speed alternatives.

MALICE
Provides some physical power and a generous amount of critical strike chance. The passive compliments our damage over time build perfectly. Every three critical strikes cause your next ability to do a hefty amount of damage over time. When combined with the crusher item, this can really light your enemy's hair on fire!

CRUSHER
This is a raw damage item which gives us more physical power, physical penetration and boosts our attack speed. The passive causes all of our abilities to always apply bonus damage over time to our targets. This is especially good for us because our swarm and honey hit multiple targets. This is a noticeable boost when combined with the malice item passive.

BLOODFORGE
A ridiculous chunk of physical power and a somewhat insignificantly small amount of physical lifesteal. We use this item for the attack power boost and for the passive, which provides us with a shield when we score an enemy god kill. While the shield is active, we receive a boost to our movement speed as well. If you want more lifesteal, try using the Asi item instead.

EXECUTIONER
Grants a bit of physical power and a large boost to attack speed. The passive reduces the target's physical resistance, which makes will cause your physical damage allies to do more damage on the afflicted enemy as well. If you want to enhance your own damage to a single high health enemy with a slight reduction in attack speed, use Qin Sais instead.

Relics

PURIFICATION BEADS
Removes all crowd control effects and makes you immune to new ones for a short time.
You can use this bad boy to get out of just about any ability your enemy will throw at you to lock you in place while they try to beat you down. Since we do not have any defensive abilities or items, this is an extremely important relic. Learn how to master it.

AEGIS AMULET
Makes you totally invulnerable to all damage and healing for a short time, but you cannot use any abilities. You can however, still run away! This is a small price to pay for surviving a beating by multiple enemy gods! Typically we use our purification beads relic to escape from crowd control, then use this relic to avoid damage as we run for our lives.

Conclusion

The real trick to playing this god effectively is maintaining your hives and achieving maximum uptime on the bees infection. Do this by resisting the urge to spam all your abilities on a target at once! Be methodical and learn to slowly rotate through your abilities so that you always have swarm, honey, or your stinger ready to use to reapply the bees infection. Select your target, infect them, then extend the infection duration as long as possible with basic attacks. Learn to identify when the bees infection wears off, then use an ability to apply it again. Once you can do this, have high accuracy with your basic attacks, and never miss with your stinger, you will surely feel the power of the god of bees!

Quick Comment

well i got some good info from this on how to play AMC and i think i might have a bit easier time winning with him but i used the build Branmuffin17 said at the end of his comment i'm still a noob of sorts but i'm account lvl 46

You state that Swarm is easier to hit enemies with compared to Honey. I dunno, might just be personal experience, but you can cover a HUGE area with Honey, and it's basically instant with great range...while Swarm, although it has a nice wide line, is somewhat slow moving and easier to dodge. No offense, but maybe you're a console player and don't know that Honey can be applied by swinging your target in different directions? It's also harder to control that with analog sticks compared to a mouse. In any case, this just seems pretty incorrect to me. Not stating that Honey should be leveled before Swarm, as Swarm is a much more damaging ability and is great for wave clear...just the application statement seems off.

You state (in the "Bees Infection" chapter) that you should always basic attack to begin combat...I'd argue against that as a set strategy. In many cases you'll do that, but a lot of times, you'll want to control the area...drop a quick hive, throw Honey to slow them and apply Bees from the Hive, close ranks, and with basic attack canceling use Swarm / Stinger as needed.

Build...okay, so Transcendence is functional as an alternative to Devourer's Gauntlet, and will help his early mana hunger. The first item I have an issue with is Malice. For 3,000 gold, it's a very expensive item in that 3rd slot. There are some cases where a first crit item can do well in an early part of a build, but I'd argue against that for a god like Ah Muzen Cab...he has no crit enhancement in his kit, and crit abilities usually appreciate a higher measure of attack speed before being built, so you can get more chances to crit within the same time period. Also, I get the synergy you're trying to create with Transcendence and The Crusher, but at that stage of the game, I just don't think Malice is the best choice.

If anything, you'd probably want The Crusher in the 3rd slot...and if not that, then The Executioner (or Asi if you want lifesteal early). Any of these will be great for overall pen function, alongside just being solid in increasing your DPS overall.

Speaking of The Executioner, I really don't think it should be built last. You really want it earlier in the build...3rd or 4th, not 6th. And in your writeup of Exe, no... Qin's Sais is NOT a replacement for Exe. Qin's would be an appropriate replacement for crits...

Bloodforge is great for the power, but if anything should be built last. It shouldn't be prioritized over The Executioner in my estimation.

And then back to crits...if you commit to building critical damage, you really want to get as close to (or exceed) 40-50% chance...it's only at that point that crits really become worthwhile. If you're only willing to commit to 1 crit item in your build, then you're probably better off getting Qin's Sais instead. As it is, if you get crits, you probably should go Rage + Deathbringer...you could consider replacing Rage late game with Malice, but you need 2 crit items.

As it stands, if we use the average crit chance for just having Malice, it's going to take you 12 connecting basic attacks (average of 4 hits to get 1 crit, e.g. 25%) to get the stacks needed to utilize the passive damage bonus in your next ability. That's not very good at all.

Hey brother, thanks for all the feedback! I've seen your name around the site before and know you're a really advanced player. I can't say that I understand all the advice, but I'm working up to it and will try working your tips into the item build soon and update accordingly. Cheers!

You're welcome! I find this god to be particularly complex. It's not just a burst damage play style strategy, but rather a constant chase with lots of ranged attack aiming, steady damage, and slow consistent use of abilities.

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